CBG-14
The Norwegian Sea
The U.S.S. Jefferson, in company with all of the Nimitz-class
supercarriers save the Carl Vinson, mounted three CIWS point-defense Gatlings.
They’d been named–possibly by a sailor with a love for science fiction–after
the three chunky-looking robots of the SF classic Silent Running, Huey, Dewey,
and Louie, though some aboard maintained that they were white and
stubby-looking and therefore named after the nephews of Donald Duck. Louie
was mounted on a sponson on the port side forward, just ahead of the main port
elevator. Dewey was all the way aft, covering a broad sweep astern and to
port. Huey was on the flight deck to starboard, outboard of the island.
The incoming missiles were spotted almost at once, and Jefferson’s
point-defense systems, set on manual because of the large number of friendly
aircraft overhead, were activated. The targets were south of Jefferson, which
put them on the port side, within Louie’s domain. Guided by its powerful
radar and tracking computer system, the white-painted silo slewed, the gun
elevated, and bursts of depleted uranium slugs shrieked toward the missiles.
Radar tracked targets and rounds simultaneously; the computer corrected the
aim and triggered another burst. One Kerry flashed into flame, lashing the
sea with shrapnel. Another missile exploded … and another …
Astern of the Jefferson, the Aegis cruiser Shiloh entered the fight.
Standard missiles and one of the two CIWS Gatlings that could bear joined in,
killing three more. RBOC guns thumped, spreading blossoms of chaff, but the
missiles already had a solid lock on the carrier and could not be so easily
distracted.
Unfortunately, Louie’s maintenance enclosure was a sponson located only
twenty yards forward of the fueling deck that had been hit by a Kerry missile
during the fight in Romsdalfjord. Shrapnel had sprayed the CIWS maintenance
enclosure. One piece, a chunk of steel no larger than a .45-caliber bullet,
had pierced Louie’s silo and half-severed a power lead.
Power still flowed to the motors that spun the silo, and earlier
diagnostics had checked out okay. But with a war on and men driven to the
limits of endurance by lack of sleep and constant work, the puncture had been
overlooked.
Now, as the silo slewed left and right, tracking incoming missiles, the
motion was enough to part the cable. There was a flash of light, a stink of
burning rubber, and the port-side CIWS went dead.
Given time, the unit could have been easily repaired. Given time,
Captain Brandt could have ordered Jefferson to swing north, bringing Dewey to
bear, or Shiloh could have moved up to help cover the carrier with her
point-defense weapons. Given time …
But there was no time. At the speed of sound, four Kerry missiles that
had survived the gauntlet of their approach howled in, one after the other,
and slammed into the Jefferson with devastating, steel-rending explosions.
The massive, armored doors sealing the oval opening from the hangar deck
to the port-side elevator were smashed, erupting inward in a spray of
white-hot, molten steel. Fire erupted as fuel lines cracked and stores
ignited. Men fled the wall of flame, their uniforms afire, or dropped to the
deck and burned. An A-6 Intruder, parked on the hangar deck while battle
damage to its radio was checked, exploded with a detonation like a
five-hundred-pound bomb, the concussion contained and absorbed by the massive
steel bulkheads of the hangar deck. Another missile hit the flight deck
opposite the island, shearing through Catapults Three and Four and sending a
shotgun blast of shrapnel cracking into the island. On the bridge, Captain
Brandt went to his knees as fragments of glass tore his face and arm, and the
helmsman writhed on the deck, shrieking in agony until corpsmen arrived to jab
the needle of a morphine syrette into his neck and drag him away.
The third and fourth missiles struck the hull amidships, almost at the
waterline, but there the bilges were thick, the hull heavily armored.
Jefferson shrugged off the blows like a prizefighter in the ring.
But her hangar deck was an inferno, fed by JP-5 pouring from torn fuel
lines. A KA-6D, an Intruder equipped for air-to-air refueling, exploded as
the flames swept across it, adding to the carnage and destruction in